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Laziness key problem around salaries for new brokers

This week we focus on the often-raised question of whether the industry should be attracting fresh blood by offering salaries to new brokers.Tanya Sale, CEO of Outsource Financial, acknowledges it's a thorny issue but worries that paying starting salaries will breed complacency.

Video transcript below:

Anna Temple, Australian Broker Online
Anna Temple: Today we focus on the often raised question of whether the industry should be attracting fresh blood by offering salaries to new brokers. Tanya Sale, CEO of Outsource Financial acknowledges it’s a thorny issue, but worries that paying starting salaries will breed complacency.

Tanya Sale, CEO, Outsource Financial

Tanya Sale: Sometimes it can breed laziness, very much so because you don’t have to do anything. They don’t have to go out and hunt for their own loans because they know that that money is going to be in their bank account every fortnight. This industry is known to be self employed and it’s known to be commission. If someone wants a salary in the lending landscape, go and work for a bank or go and work for a credit union or something like that. You want the motivation, you really need the motivation in this industry. So someone that’s just going to walk up to work each day on the lending and say yet I am going to collect my salary every week or every fortnight, you sometimes have to question, you know are you going to get your bang for your buck out of that.

Anna Temple: Sale says when some of Outsource Financial’s affiliate groups trialed paying new brokers, the results were not productive and left employers working hard themselves as well as being out of pocket.

Tanya Sale: We had, couple of our larger groups decided to go down that path to attract some newbies into the industry and it then ended in tears, to tell you the truth. Because when they interviewed the person they came across really very well, really good, but what you have to ask yourself as an owner of a business, you have a responsibility and accountability too to make this work. So you have to manage the process and you have to manage in setting the target, then who is going to drive those targets, don’t think the newbie is going to, it’s going to come from the owner of that business. So what happens was, they employed someone, salary, we even supported them on a lead generation side and the individual they just didn’t have that fire in their belly. They had no desire to go out and really drive and look for new business. You know why, because they were getting, they were quite comfortable getting their salary in their hand. So our, some of our groups went back saying okay, we will give you commission only, but we will also assist you in the lead side, and that’s worked an absolute treat.

Anna Temple: Finally, Sale believes whole heartedly that the industry needs new blood, but thinks there will be struggles to find the model that works outside of the existing one.

Tanya Sale: This industry really needs, I believe, a big oomph from the new entrants side of things. Then I think maybe, maybe a small retainer might do the trick. But then again it has, would have to be small because you don’t want them to lose that hunger and you don’t want them to lose that motivation. But then, you then have to put targets into place, so then that falls back on the manager or the owner of that business to make sure that they are accountable, because don’t rely on the newbie to drive it, because it’s just not going to happen.